CHAPTER II

PRIVIEW OF LITERATURE
All living things get the energy they need to live from a chemical reaction
called respiration. This process needs glucose as a starting point. Respiration is
essential for growth and maintenance of all plant tissues, and plays an important role
in the carbon balance of individual cells, whole plants and ecosystems, as well as in
the global carbon cycle (Lecture team, 2014).
Plant need energy for growth, transport and maintenance of vital functions as
animals do. To get the energy required, they oxidize (i.e burn the photosynthetically
fixed sugars). At the same time, water and carbon dioxide are released as waste
products. Respiration occurs in all living plants parts (i.e in the leaves, trunk and
roots) (Lecture team, 2014).
Water scarcity is considered as the main environmental factor limiting plant
growth and yield worldwide drought has adverse effects on plant growth, affecting
mainly leaf and root growth, stomatal conductance, photosynthetic rate and biomass
gain. Changes in plant growth elicited by low water availability have also been
related to modulations of the plant cell carbon metabolism, which are dependent on
the balance between photosynthesis and respiration. Although photosynthesis may
decrease up to 100 % becoming completely impaired under severe drought,
respiration rate may either increase or decrease. Respiration is an essential metabolic
process that generates not only ATP but several other metabolites that are used in
many synthetic processes essential for growth and maintenance of the cell
homeostasis, including under stress conditions (Silvia A.Martim et all, 2009).
Plants draw CO
2
from the atmosphere and make sugars through the process of
photosynthesis. But they also release some CO
2
during respiration as they use the
sugars to generate energy for self-maintenance and growth. How elevated CO
2
affects
plant respiration will therefore influence future food supplies and the extent to which
plants can capture CO
2
from the air and store it as carbon in their tissues
(University of Illinois, 2009).
The measurement of respiration is very important because it provides a window
through which we can determine the metabolic activity of plant tissues. During
aerobic respiration, stored food (e.g., carbohydrates, fats, proteins) are combined with
oxygen from the atmosphere to produce carbon dioxide, water and the energy needed
to maintain the plant cell, tissue and quality of the commodity. The balanced
equation for aerobic respiration is shown below

The rate of respiration is tightly coupled to the rate of cell metabolism because
the energy derived from respiration drives all other reactions within a cell.
Measurement of respiration affords an easy non-destructive means of monitoring the
metabolic and physiological state of the tissues. Nowhere in plant science is
knowledge of greater importance than in the area of postharvest physiology, where
the events of senescence and ripening are often signaled by abrupt changes in
respiratory behavior. For this reason, postharvest physiologists have spent
considerable time devising convenient means of measuring respiration. The rate of
any reaction can be determined by measuring the rate at which the substrates
disappear or the products appear. Apart from the water produced by respiration,
which is relatively trivial compared to the very high water content of plant (and
particularly fruit) tissues, all the substrates and products of respiration have been used
in determining the rate of respiration (Mikal E. Saltveit, 2014).
In aerobic respiration one molecule of oxygen is consumed for each molecule
of carbon dioxide produced. In the absence of oxygen, i.e. anaerobic respiration,
carbon dioxide is produced without the concomitant consumption of equal amounts
of oxygen. Under anaerobic conditions, the flow of substrate through the initial steps
of respiration (i.e., the anaerobic reactions of glycolysis) is increased to compensate
for the loss of energy production. Glycolytic reactions (i.e., fermentation with the
production of carbon dioxide and alcohol) extract less than 10% of the energy
extracted by aerobic respiration. As a result of the increase use of substrate, the
production of carbon dioxide can increase greatly. A small change in the production
of carbon dioxide is easily measured since its concentration in air is around 0.03%.
For example, the 0.3% decrease in oxygen during aerobic respiration would be
accompanied by a 0.3% increase in carbon dioxide. This 0.3% increase would be
easy to detect since it represents a 10-fold increase over the background
concentration. Therefore, measurements of the production of carbon dioxide are the
preferred methods to measure respiration (Mikal E. Saltveit, 2014).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lecturer Team. 2014. Practical Guidance for Plant Physiology. Jurusan Biologi
FMIPA UNM : Makassar.
Mikal E. Saltveit, 2014. Measuring Respiration, University of California, Davis.
Slvia A. MartimI,IV,*; Mirella P. SantosII; Anderson L. PeanhaII; Celso
PommerII; Eliemar CampostriniII; Alexandre P. VianaII; Arnoldo R.
FaanhaIII, IV; Ricardo Bressan-SmithII, 2009. Photosynthesis and cell
respiration modulated by water deficit in grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) cv.
Cabernet Sauvignon. Research Article Brazilian Journal of Plant
Physiology; ISSN 1677-0420.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. High Carbon Dioxide Boosts
Plant Respiration, Potentially Affecting Climate And Crops. Date:
February 10, 2009.